


Maturity

by spicedpiano



Series: Abuse and Misuse of the Greek Alphabet [2]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - High School, First Time, Fluff, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Sweet, What happens in XMRB Chat doesn't always stay in XMRB Chat, the things that happen at all-boys schools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 00:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedpiano/pseuds/spicedpiano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik never really thinks about it, that he and Charles might be growing close in a way the other boys at school are not. </p><p>(AKA: That fic where Erik and Charles are freshmen at prep school, and everything is A/O and nothing hurts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maturity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).



> Content notes: involves underage sex, both partners being minors. Alpha/omega dynamics.
> 
> The lovely **whoofassavoy** did some [fanart](http://whoofassavoy.tumblr.com/post/29067989187/okay-so-spicedpianos-ao3-works-are-just-beyond) for this story! It is absolutely gorgeous, and I love it.

Erik wakes up and he is drowning.

He drags in a breath and he nearly chokes on it, the heaviness of the – god, what is this, what is  _that_ , it’s – his head spins – it’s like old leather, and moss after a storm, and it’s sinking down into the marrow of his bones and turning his blood to molten iron.

A moment later, he habituates.  Or at least, his body adjusts, something in his core clicking over to drag him out of the crushing heat of just one second before, survival instinct of some kind pulling him upward and outward, his fingers into fists – and his eyes snap open. 

His ceiling is overhead, blank and disorienting.  Erik pushes himself up on still-trembling elbows and turns his head toward the source of that smell.

Charles is sitting in the middle of his bed, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms locked around his shins, his head tilted down and face obscured by the curl of dark locks which hang around it.  The dim moonlight cast in through their window colors him in shades of silver: his shirt is pewter, his skin is white gold.  Charles is rocking back and forth, and Erik can see from here the way his toes curl in his sheets – sheets which are … darker than he remembered, a dark grey stain spreading out from beneath Charles’s hips, dark and –-

 _\-- wet_.

Erik shudders inexplicably.

“Charles?”

Charles lifts his head and Erik is hit with the surge of something thick and vibrant and  _strong_ , pounding in a single throb throughout his entire body, pulsing out from the center of his chest and flooding down to the very tips of his fingers.

Charles makes a strange, hitching sound in the back of his throat.  He says:  “I’m sorry.”

Erik realizes it, then, what the slickness beneath Charles’s hips really is. 

\--

They meet on the first day of fall semester.  Erik arrives in his new dormitory and his roommate is already waiting for him, trunk half-unpacked.  He is neat, Erik notices.  All his clothes are folded and stacked on his bed, organized apparently by color, and then by style.  He has quite a lot of cardigans.

The roommate himself is short but stocky boy, the kind of kid who would not look out of place on a soccer team.  Small and strong.  He has the sincere smile of someone who is even younger than his appearance already suggests.

“Hi,” the roommate says.  “I’m Charles Xavier.  You must be Erik –“

“—Lehnsherr,” Erik finishes.  “Yes.”  He drops his sole suitcase by the door. 

He does not expect to like Charles Xavier.  Erik rarely likes anyone.  He simply shuts the door behind him and walks toward his bed – but on the way, he can't help glancing over at the books and mementos Charles has already unpacked and filed on his side of the dresser.  On the top shelf, just next to the full collection of the  _Narnia_  books, is a small wooden chess set.

Charles catches him looking.  Erik jerks his gaze away, but it is already too late.  Charles smiles.  He reaches for the set, pulling out the board and settling it on Erik’s bed, and asks:  “Do you play?”

It takes Erik until the end of their third game to decide not to  _dis_ like Charles Xavier.

After that, he thinks, the rest was inevitable.

\--

They learn about alphas and betas and omegas in their first year biology class. 

Well, not  _learn_.  They already know.  They are fourteen years old, they know where babies come from.

But they learn again, anyway, the mechanics of it:  heat, and imprinting, and knotting.  Erik notices that Charles takes scrupulous notes, bent over his desk with his nose nearly brushing the page, pencil scritching along and his lower lip caught by his teeth.

Erik tries not to look at Charles in class anymore.

\--

They become roommates first, and then friends – and then rivals, when fall semester exams roll around and Erik and Charles are both vying for the top of their chemistry class – and then friends again, just as quickly. 

Sometimes Charles beats Erik at chess.  Other times, Erik wins.  Charles joins the chess club on campus, and for a few weeks he beats Erik consistently – until Erik goes online and memorizes as many Master Games as he can, and then the tables turn once more.

Erik never really thinks about it, that he and Charles might be growing close in a way the other boys at school are not.  It feels natural, if Charles should lean his head against Erik’s shoulder one late night while they are studying, or when Erik falls asleep in Charles’s bed, his arm still curled loosely around Charles’s waist.

They are too young to mature in That way, so no one tells them they ought to behave any differently.

Charles’s tag is sticking out of the back of his sweater; Erik tucks it in for him.

Erik has an eyelash on his cheek; Charles brushes it away.

Charles hums in the shower, tuneless songs he makes up as he goes along, songs Erik has stuck in his head for the rest of the day.

Erik is angry when he finds out his mother’s illness has gotten worse.  Charles comes up behind him and presses his brow to the back of Erik’s neck and just stands there, his breaths warm on Erik’s skin, until Erik is steady again.

Erik finds he likes the insides of Charles’s wrists, likes catching glimpses of that pale skin when Charles writes, flashing out from beneath the cuff of his blue cardigan. 

He wants to twine his fingers with Charles’s and lift that wrist to his mouth, to kiss him right above the pulse point.

\--

Erik does not think of Charles as omega, or beta, or anything else.  He knows Charles is not alpha the same way Charles knows Erik is not a beta:

They just do.

He does not think of Charles as an omega that night, either -- when they are both awake in their beds, staring at each other from across the room, Charles’s apology still fresh and salty on his lips.

He does not think of Charles as an omega, but neither of them can pretend Erik is anything but what he is.

So Erik gathers up his sheets and blanket with shaking hands, bundling them up in his arms, and he leaves the room without saying a word.

He ends up sleeping in the student lounge, tucked between the back of the sofa and the wall where the night patrol will not see him.  He sleeps through his first class, and half of the second.

\--

His third class, he decides to skip.

The room is empty when he gets back.  He does not know what else he expected. 

He can't smell Charles’s scent anymore; the pheromones are obscured under the heavy odor of lemon verbena.  Erik supposes Charles must have sprayed an entire bottle of air freshener to cover it up.

He sits down on his bed, dropping his sheets onto the floor.  Charles’s bed is directly across from him, neatly-made, the sheets obviously freshly laundered.  There is no sign whatsoever of the previous night.  Charles even turned the hem of the sheet down over the comforter, hotel-perfect.

He never did that, before.

Erik stands up, and walks to Charles’s side of the room.  He trails the tips of his fingers along the edge of Charles’s desk, picks up one of his pencils and rolls it between his palms before setting it down again.  Charles’s biology textbook is open to the chapter on genetics.  The left-hand page is highlighted.  The right is still unread.  Charles has a copy of Bobby Fischer’s chess book sitting next to his lamp.  He's been studying, trying to break Erik’s record.

Erik is lying on his own bed when Charles returns.

“Oh,” Charles says.  His voice is quiet, more murmur than speech.  “I didn’t –.”  He presses his lips together and falls briefly silent.  And then:  “I went to the infirmary.  It looks like – that is, they say I’ve Matured.  I’m -- .”

He shifts uncomfortably where he stands and Erik sits up again, swinging his legs out to set his feet on the floor.  “An omega?”

Charles nods.

“Do you have to move?” Erik asks.  The administration has strict housing policies regarding omegas.  It is a matter of safety as much as it is of propriety.

“No,” Charles says.  “You haven’t – yet, have you?  They don’t know if you’re … anything.  You might be a beta.”

Erik smiles, the expression quick and sharp on his lips.  “Yes.  A beta.”

Charles pauses for a moment, and then he steps forward, coming to sit down on the edge of his own bed.  He has a pamphlet of some sort in his hands; he is picking at the corner of it with his thumb nail.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Erik asks.  “If you would rather – live somewhere else -- .”  Erik’s stomach is in his throat.

“No!”  Charles shakes his head.  “No … I don’t mind.  I want to keep rooming with you, if that’s all right.”

“I hope,” Erik says, “that was not meant to be a question.”

Charles grins, the expression hesitant at first – but then it becomes his own, spreading easily, and Erik is light-headed, he is dizzy, he is completely swept away. 

\--

Erik likes that they fell in love first, before they ever knew who was alpha and who was omega, before those terms had any meaning to them beyond what they read in a book or things that they heard adults say.  He likes that he knew Charles was his before he ever felt that tide of lust when he caught Charles’s scent.  He likes how it seems Charles has always been a part of him, curled up somewhere beneath his breastbone.

He likes the way Charles whispers his name the first time they have sex, his body clenching around Erik’s, his eyes wide and glassy and his pupils blown black as ink.  Something in Erik’s chest growls base and animalistic, clawing for more, but Charles keeps him grounded with the soft press of his lips and softer slip of his fingers along Erik’s spine.

Charles’s tongue slides into his mouth and Erik slides inside of him, like to like, bodies slotting together part to whole. 

Charles holds tight to him when Erik comes, his nails digging hot crescents into Erik’s skin -- and when Erik bites his mark into Charles’s neck just a little too roughly, Charles arches up against him and only pulls him closer.

Afterward, while they are still tied together, Charles tangles their fingers.  Erik kisses the first vertebra of Charles’s spine and then he draws Charles’s arm back and brings his lips  _there_ , to where he can feel Charles’s blood beating just beneath his skin.

“You’re mine,” Charles says.

And Erik whispers, “Yes.”


End file.
